Tough-on-crime parole board member keeps seat

Friday

May 30, 2008 at 12:01 AMMay 30, 2008 at 10:09 PM

Senate Democrats tried but failed to toss a tough-on-crime member from the state’s parole board, an effort that Republicans say may be designed to engineer freedom for Rockford cop-killer Theodore Bacino.

Aaron Chambers

Senate Democrats tried but failed to toss a tough-on-crime member from the state’s parole board, an effort that Republicans say may be designed to engineer freedom for Rockford cop-killer Theodore Bacino.

“If he’s released fairly, that’s fine,” said Terry Rudeen, widow of Winnebago County Sheriff’s Deputy Michael Mayborne, Bacino’s victim. “But I don’t like hearing about how possibly the deck was stacked or that they were attempting to.”

Sen. Rickey Hendon, D-Chicago, and fellow Senate Democrats on Thursday came just two votes shy of ousting Salvador Diaz, a retired Chicago police officer and darling of Illinois prosecutors, from the Prisoner Review Board.

On Friday, the Democrats were poised to seek another vote. But they surrendered after Diaz supporters worked Thursday night and Friday morning to bolster the bloc of senators on their side of the fight.

Bacino gunned down Mayborne, a young Winnebago County sheriff’s deputy, outside a Machesney Park truck stop in 1974, after he and another man robbed a Poplar Grove bank.

Bacino, 72, has served less than half of his 75- to 100-year sentence. If all six of the Prisoner Review Board members who voted last June to parole Bacino back him again on June 19, when the board is expected to consider his 27th request for parole, then Bacino will need just one more vote to gain freedom.

On the Senate floor Thursday, Bacino’s crime and his plea for freedom took center stage when Hendon fought to reject Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s nomination of Diaz for another six years on the board. Members of the board are nominated by the governor and confirmed by the Senate.

“You better think long and hard about whether you’re protecting someone who is a cop killer,” Sen. Kirk Dillard, R-Hinsdale, warned Democrats before the vote. “This could be, in the end I think, a huge mistake to get rid of Mr. Diaz.”

Sen. John Millner, R-St. Charles, said multiple law enforcement officials and organizations approached him and said they feared Senate Democrats are trying to remove Diaz to engineer Bacino’s parole.

Hendon insisted he had never heard of Bacino before Thursday and that he wanted to reject Diaz because the nominee failed to personally ask for his blessing. Hendon chairs a Senate committee that screens the governor’s appointments.

The committee recently voted unanimously to give Diaz another term on the board, officials said. But on Thursday morning the committee voted again, this time with Democrats opposing Diaz and Republicans supporting him.

The full Senate then voted 31-13 to send Diaz back to the board, producing just one more vote than necessary to reappoint him. Eleven senators voted “present” and four didn’t vote.

Diaz has served on the board since July 2005. He declined to comment, said board attorney Ken Tupy.